Revision Essay On 'Per Capita' Income (Development)

Why is per capita income considered an inadequate measure of a country’s development? Answer with reference to the various dimensions of poverty AND alternative ways of measuring human development.

Plan
1. Reason1- It tells us nothing about internal income distribution
2. Reason 2- Income measure only one part of broad view of poverty.
3. Reason 3- Currency measure not usually local currency PPP
4. Reason 4- Other ‘Dimension of Poverty’ debate issues not mentioned eg subjectivity ‘absolute’ ‘relative’ ‘snapshots
5. Alternative ways of measuring human development HDI. And why it is better
6. Measuring Poverty not simple. Even HDI not perfect but still working on innovations.


Intro

Per Capita income is considered an inadequate measure of a country’s development for a wide variety of reasons. It is based on the median GDP income and tells us nothing about the internal distribution of wealth within the country so it could be argued that the figure can sometimes relate to only a very small section of the population in the middle. It is also a money-metric measure that overlooks other important considerations when trying to understand a country’s development. There are other major issues around converting the local currency into an internationally recognized bench mark currency like the United States Dollar because local food prices, for example, can be relatively low in the local currency. There are also a whole raft of other considerations that fall into the ‘Dimensions of Poverty’ debate like, measuring ‘Absolute’ poverty or ‘Relative’ poverty, ‘Snapshot’ or ‘Time-line’ issues and the ‘subjective’ nature of Poverty. To try overcome some of these concerns and to get a broader picture of development the United Nations Development Programme has come up with the Human Development Index to try get a more balanced picture. Although HDIs are a massive improvement on measuring development on Per Capita income it is by no means perfect, measuring poverty and development is not easy but innovations are constantly helping us to refine our methods to look with more detail at specific internal groups.



1.
The first reason I would give for why per capita income is considered to an inadequate measure of a country’s development is because it tells us nothing about the internal income distribution of that country. The country’s GDP is crudely divided by the population to give this per capita income regardless of whether there is a massive disparity between the ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ within that country. With this type of disparity, per capita income is the median of these two groups so could be equally unrepresentative of both groups. Even where income distribution figures exist they are often measured with the ‘household’ being the unit so therefore ignoring any internal disparity within the family. This intrahousehold distribution of resources could take the form of the men of the house getting more nutrition or education.

2.
This income-centric measure also overlooks other important indicators of poverty like for example, average life expectancy or access to education or healthcare. Any number of factors could be taken into account to try gauge poverty but looking simply at per capita income is showing a lack of understanding for the complexity of poverty. Some people can live from the produce they can grow in their locality but something like this is not involved in a measurable financial transaction and without speculating about its market value would go uncounted. Also access to education and healthcare may appear to be less tangible indicators of poverty but they would be considered by any serious study or measure.

3.
Another reason that measuring per capita income based on GDP can be misleading is that this measure of production and its value is made in a currency that can be freely converted internationally like the US Dollar. This is misleading because the local currency may have a different purchasing power for commodities at local prices, and example of this is that in certain countries living off two US Dollars per day could buy enough food to have a reasonably high calorific intake whereas in the US it most certainly would not. The reality of this situation is taken into consideration with some measurements, when this is done is the result is given in ‘purchasing power parity dollars’ or ‘PPP Dollars.’

4.
The ‘Dimension of Poverty’ debate looks at the above issues but also has many other considerations, like ‘Snapshot or Timeline’ issues, the difference between ‘Absolute’ or ‘Relative’ poverty and ‘subjective perceptions of poverty’. What I mean by ‘Snapshot or Timeline’ issues is that poverty or relative prosperity can be something that is seasonal, or negatively affected by war or drought, we would need to look over a long period of life-cycle to try understand these. ‘Absolute’ or ‘Relative’ poverty are two different ways of measuring poverty, the former is people under a given benchmark(E.g. 1PPP Dollar per day) and the latter is half the mean income or in some cases considers exclusion from participation in society. Finally, when I talk about ‘subjective perceptions of poverty’ I am suggesting that there is no definitive ‘objective’ measure of poverty so there may be some disparity between local and development agency understandings of what ‘really’ constitutes poverty.

5.
There are many other ways to measure poverty but the Human Development Index goes a lot further than Per Capita income to try get a multi-dimentional picture of poverty. The HDI considers life expectancy, educational exposure/literacy and real per capita income with the ‘Purchasing Power Parity’ considerations mentioned above. It has been said that the HDI is ‘a more comprehensive measure than per capita income as it has the advantage of directing attention from material possessions toward human needs’. The United Nations Development Programme, who introduced these measures, uses the HDI to rank countries into three groups, low, medium or high human development. An example of HDI giving us different results to simple Per Capita income is that of Bolivia in 2004 with a much lower GDP scored a higher HDI than Guatamala illustrating that they were translating that lower income into better human development.

6.
Measuring poverty is not an easy business with so many different factors to try understand and take into consideration. HDI is not at all perfect, even the UNDP said that ‘‘the HDI is a useful starting point, it is important to remember that the concept of human development is much broader and more complex than any summary measure can capture…the HDI is not a comprehensive measure. It does not include important aspects of human development, notably the ability to participate in the decisions that affect ones’ life and to enjoy the respect of others in the community’’. These shortcomings have been recognised and some effort has been put into address some of the issues with recent HDI innovations being able to look at separate components like, gender, class, ethnicity and regional variation to get a better picture of the skewed incomes of these groups.

Conc

The reasons for Per Capita income being considered an inadequate measure of a country’s development are many and varied. Ignoring the internal distribution of wealth within the country can result it the Per Capita income measure being representative of only a small percentage of the population. Looking at development in an income-centric way misses other important considerations. There are also issues relating to usefulness of converting the local currency into an internationally recognized bench mark currency because local food prices can, in some cases, be relatively cheap in the local currency. The ‘Dimensions of Poverty’ debate also highlights other anomalies like, whether to measure ‘Absolute’ poverty or ‘Relative’ poverty, the inaccuracies of ‘Snapshot’ measurements and the lack of a universal ‘objective’ standard of poverty. The UNDP measure of HDI is a massive improvement to measuring a country’s development on Per Capita income but even with some of its latest innovations there can never really be a ‘perfect’ way to measure a countries development as particular idiosyncrasies based on a more sociological understanding are always present.

Sebastian O’Brien April 2007

Revsion Essay On Political Obligation (Political Theory)

Examine the reasons given for arguing we have a political obligation to obey the government. Are there ever good reasons for disobeying the law?

Plan

1. Pol Oblig Reason 1- Ensuring our own security. Hobbes.
2. PO Reason 2- Social Contract Theory. Hobbes, Locke, and most important development with Rousseuau
3. Within Social Contract Theory Disobey The Law Reason 1- ‘Right to Rebellion’ SCT Locke, US Constitution, French ‘Rights of Man’
4. DTL Reason 2- Non-Violent protest. Gandhi, US Civil Rights and success of some Violent action.
5. DTL Reason 3- Civil Disobedience. John Rawls on CD in good democracy.

Intro.
The main reason given for arguing we have a political obligation to obey the government is that it is the only way of ensuring our own personal security. This led to ‘Social Contract’ theory which I believe is still important in relation to our political obligation to obey the law. There are also good reasons for disobeying the law. I believe that ‘Social Contract’ theory establishes a ‘right to rebellion/revolution’ in response to despotic leadership and an example of this is clearly stated in the US Constitution. Forms of non-violent protest have been very successful in the past, violent revolution can be sanctioned in extreme cases and ‘civil disobedience’ can be used, with conditions, to demonstrate a political point.

1.
The primary reason for having a political obligation to obey the government comes from the understanding that it should result in more personal security for its own people. Thomas Hobbes, an important English political theorist, argued that a ‘state of nature’ (meaning how life would be like without government) would be ‘nasty, brutish and short’ in his famous work ‘Leviathan’ This is where Hobbes argued when he said that without a government in his ‘state of nature’ it would be a ‘war of all against all.’ When he is quoted saying life would be ‘nasty, brutal and short’ in this state he argues that we should give our power away to an absolute monarch who would protect us from ourselves and each other. Regardless of his solution Hobbes’ words have been used to remind people of what life could be, and was in earlier times, like without a government thus enforcing the idea of what could be at stake if we don’t obey our government.

2.
A ‘Social Contract’ is now abstract concept but their development gave us a tangible reason to obey the government. When the Frenchman Jean-Jaques Rousseuau took up these themes in his treatise ‘The Social Contract’ he articulated this as an agreement between all people about how their will be demonstrated to the government. It was not as in Hobbes, where the population pool their individual power and give it over to the ruler/s:with Rousseuau who believed in some sort of direct democracy, and certain not any kind of representative democracy, it was all about finding the ‘general will’ of the people.

3.
Within this development of ‘Social Contract’ theory there was established a ‘right to rebellion/revolution’ if the government was not representing the ‘will of the people’. It was most clearly specified in John Locke’s 1689 work ‘Two Treatises of Government’ where he established this ‘right to rebellion’ where the government was tyrannical. Rousseuau’s idea was that the ‘contract’ would be refreshed and renewed with each demonstration of the ‘general will’ but without direct democracy this had to be achieved in some other way. To this end, Locke introduced the idea of ‘checks and balances’ being put in place to ensure that the executive and legislature have a separation of powers. This ‘right to rebellion/revolution’ was considered so important that it is mentioned in the US Constitution, the French Revolutionary ‘Rights of Man’ proclamation and is still considered by most to be fundamental to the conception of a modern ‘Social Contract.’

4.
In circumstances where the government is seen to be ‘unjust’ (a term that blatantly suffers from relativism) or repressive it could be argued that non-violent protest or in even more dramatic cases revolution, or to some others even terrorism, could be sanctioned. Non-violent protest or ‘Satyagraha’ was famously used by Gandhi to express his dissatisfaction with British rule in India and other non-violent protests like that of Rosa Parks in the black civil-rights movement in the United States of America. The argument for violent revolution or even terrorism is weaker but if the oppression of the people is extreme enough (again relativism is an issue) then I believe more dramatic methods could be employed. In most famous revolutions it is an oppressive dictator or regime that is seen by the people to not represent them that are targeted, but to what lengths people can go in this situation is definitely a matter of opinion. Both Nelson Mandela and the current Sinn Fein leadership had been involved with terrorist activity of some sort and have subsequently enjoyed political power.
5.
‘Civil Disobedience’ as a concept was popularised by an essay by Henry David Thoreau in 1849 and, as mentioned above, this type of non-violent resistance has been widely used to make a political point. Thoreau was objecting to paying taxes to a government that allowed slavery and was credited by Gandhi as being “the chief cause of the abolition of slavery in America”. It was argued by John Rawls in his 1971 work ‘A Theory of Justice’ that ‘Civil Disobedience’ could, and should, be part of a fair democracy. He says that as long as it is done right(i.e. within the general conception of law), it shows a certain respect for the established political authority and is a way of people expressing their moral objection to something that they feel is ‘unjust’ without causing direct violence. What happens when you have something that is clearly ‘unjust’ to you but it attracts no popular support even after the issue has been raised by civil disobedience? Maybe Roussaueu’s argument for disassociating yourself with your political peer group would be applicable but it is in practice not easily achieved.

Conc.
The most important reason given for arguing that we have a political obligation to obey the government is that without a functioning government we would be in a, so called, ‘state of nature’ where, with no laws, it would be a war ‘of all against all.’ In this state, it has also been famously said that life would be, ‘nasty, brutish and short’, so the implication is that we need to submit to a greater ‘social order’ of some sort, for our own security. These ideas we first articulated by what political theorist call ‘social contract theory’. This is the now implicit understanding that there is an abstract ‘social contract’ between the people to ensure that the government respects the ‘general will’ of the electorate. Put very crudely, these ‘contracts’ are meant to ensure that the people’s interests will be served by the government in return for people obeying the law. The ‘right to rebellion’ was an essential part of John Locke’s social contract theory, explicitly mentioned in the US constitution and the ‘Rights of Man’ from the French Revolution and I will argue is still important to any healthy democracy. Non-violent resistance has been famously used by people like Gandhi, South African Anti-Apartheid protesters and the US Civil-Rights movement. Even violent revolution or terrorist actions could be seen by some to be legitimate in certain circumstances. ‘Civil Disobedience’ was first encouraged by Thoreau in the late nineteenth century to show solidarity with the movement to abolish slavery in America by non payment of taxes and more recently the political theorist/philosopher John Rawls argued that ‘Civil Disobedience’ could and in fact should be part of a functioning democracy.


Sebastian O’Brien April 2007